When we leave Chipewyan August 17th, the fall hunt of waveys has already begun. We learn afterwards that the Loutit boys alone made a bag of sixteen hundred of these birds which, salted down, form a considerable part of the winter food of the old Fort. Mrs. William Johnson comes down to see us embark. She has overwhelmed us with generous kindness at our every visit to Chipewyan, kindness we cannot soon forget. It is a small group which now starts out in the little tug on the bosom of the mighty Peace,—Major Routledge, R.N.W.M.P., Mr. and Mrs. John Gaudet with their two olive-branches "Char-lee" and "Se-li-nah," now returning to Lesser Slave Lake from a visit to Fort Good Hope, Miss Brown and myself.
This part of the journey we are to enjoy more keenly than all that has gone before. Rising on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, the Peace River is the largest affluent of the Mackenzie, being already a splendid stream when it cuts through that range. With but one break, the Peace River affords a nine hundred mile stretch of navigation, and we can justly describe the country through which it flows as a plateau in which the river has made for itself a somewhat deep valley. Extensive grassy plains border it on both sides, and north of Fort Vermilion country of this character extends to the valley of the Hay River. Crossing the Quatre Fourches, an offshoot of the Peace at the Lake Athabasca edge, we turn our faces due west to a land of promise. The Mackenzie River and the banks of the Great Slave may some day afford homes to a busy and prosperous populace, but there are many fertile and more accessible lands to be settled first. With the Peace River Country there is no conjecture, for it is merely a question of the coming of the railway. Given a connection with the world to the south, the district watered by the Peace will at once support a vast agrarian population. The advance riders are already on the ground.
It is not our intent to go to the expense of using a steamer for our whole journey up the Peace. Scows will allow us to proceed more leisurely and to see more as we go, so the second day we turn the steamer back and transfer ourselves and our belongings into a little open craft or model-boat The Mee-wah-sin. We have a crew of five men, one on the steering-sweep and four to track, and in this wise we make our way for three hundred miles up the great river to Fort Vermilion. One day we improvise a sail and so make fifty miles in a favourable wind, but, with this exception, every other mile of the journey is by patient towing.
Incidents are many. The first morning after we turned back the little tug, the Kid and I left the slow trackers behind and were glad to stretch ourselves in a long forenoon's tramp along the sandy beach. The mosquitoes were practically gone and for the first time all summer one could really enjoy the woods, where a tang of autumn in the air made every breath a tonic draught. Exulting in the fact that we were alive, we turned a sharp corner and came suddenly face to face with a grey wolf, loping along at a swinging pace at the water's edge, muzzle close to the ground! To make the story worth telling, one should have something to say of "yawning jaws" and "bloodshot eyes" and "haunches trembling for a spring." But this grey wolf simply refused to play that part. He took one look at us, evidently didn't approve, and turned up from his tracks quietly into the cottonwoods above. As we on our side had brought neither gun nor camera from the Mee-wah-sin, we are unable to punctuate the story by either pelt or picture. Sic transit lupus!
A week out from Chipewyan, where the Swan River makes into the Peace, we came one glorious afternoon upon a camp of Crees, the family of the Se-weep-i-gons. They had just killed two bears. We bought the skins and a large portion of meat from them, and Mrs. Se-weep-i-gon very kindly added to the feast of fat things some high-bush cranberries "in a present." As an excuse for listening to their soft voices, before we left the camp we asked the name of every member of the little group, scratching the list down on a piece of birchbark. The Crees evidently considered this an official ceremony, for after we had paid our score and shaken hands with everybody from Grandpa to the latest baby and were well out in mid-stream, Mrs. Se-weep-i-gon came running down to the bank to call us back. Rowing to the shore we found that she had remembered one more child whose name she wanted to add to the list. She assured us that this one too had a little brass cross hanging round his neck, so we will be sure to know him if we meet him in the woods.
We lived for the next two days on bear-meat and cranberries.
Evening on the Peace
So one wonderful day follows another as our little boat is towed first against one bank then another of this majestic stream. The forest growth is a marvel. We measure one morning three of the spruce trees to which our tent-ropes are tied, and get for base measurement six feet eight inches, five feet two inches, and five feet respectively. The trees averaged ninety feet in height and would give perhaps one thousand feet to each tree. The autumn tints on the willows and alders of the high river-banks are indescribably beautiful. We pass through one hundred miles of a veritable field of the cloth of gold. We look out of our tent-flaps at night on this living glory, and wake up to it again with each new morning sun.